An Architect is a Leader

Stephen Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People states that you should “Begin with the End in Mind”. You need to know where you are going, if you plan to accomplish anything of significance. Creating and communicating a strategy can help set the direction of your team or project. A strategy is vision of what you want to accomplish, a scope to this work, and a plan to get your goals accomplished. This can generally be accomplished in 5 steps:

Define Your Vision and Goals
Creating a document where you write down what the vision of the project is and define what the goals of the project are will set our gets everything started.

Determine the Advantages
What are the expected benefits for pursuing this strategy to the business? You should be able to spell this out in business terms to get buy in for the strategy.

Set the Scope
You should clearly state what is in the strategy and what is out of the strategy. Generally, you will not be able to do everything if you want to successfully implement a strategy. You need to focus on what you want to accomplish and may require a phased approach to implement the strategy.

Figure out a Budget and Timeline
You should make a high level pass of what the strategy will cost and when you plan to implement major portions of the strategy. A budget is fundamental to understanding what the cost of your strategy may should include just high level areas that you will budget thru of the years to give you an idea of the scope in costs of the strategy. The following is a sample budget sheet:

Expense	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Equipment	300000	50000	50000
People	500000	300000	200000
Space/Facilities	20000	20000	20000
Administration	5000	5000	5000
Miscellaneous	30000	30000	30000
Total Expenses	855000	405000	305000
Total Income	800000	900000	1000000
Profit	–55000	495000	695000

A roadmap can help give context to the order that high level tasks need to be done and when they need to be done.

Sample Roadmap, from Wikipedia

A roadmap gives people context of what to expect and supports the communication plan.

Communicate the Strategy
Ideally, you have been including others in the creation of strategy and have their buy in during the creation of the strategy. You will need to pay attention to all of your relationships in the company: up, down and sideways.

Thinking and Deciding Like a Leader

You will need to think through problems to help make the best decision based on the information known. This is not always easy and can be scary for some people leading to indecision. Leaders need to make decisions and keep things moving along. This may involve a tool that simply expresses the positives and negatives of a given idea in two columns and then adding each column up to come to a decision. A thinking method like Six Thinking Hats may also help in this process. Six Thinking Hats is a tool I use that was developed by Edward de Bono and basically helps you make sure you cover all aspects of an idea before coming to a decision. It uses 6 colored hats as a metaphor for six ways of thinking about an idea.

• White Hat = Information known or needed, the facts
• Yellow Hat = Positives/benefits of the idea
• Black Hat = Risks/negatives of the idea
• Red Hat = Feelings/intuition of the idea
• Green Hat = Alternatives, possibilities or new ideas
• Blue Hat = Used to manage the process (useful if running a meeting with this methodology, keeps everyone on track)

You can basically run through these as questions to the person proposing the idea or in your head, and then make a decision.

Six Thinking Hats can also be used to run a meeting and help the group come to a decision quickly. You basically set up a timeline like White Hat 5 min, Black Hat 2 min, Yellow Hat 2 min, Red Hat 30 seconds (just get a one-word feeling), Green Hat 5 min. The Blue Hat would moderate the meeting, make sure the timeline is followed and make sure the participants are using the correct hat with their input. For example, one may be negative about new ideas during the green hat session. You can put the hats in any order, leave some out or even repeat them to meet your needs. This can help keep meetings concise and arrive at decisions more quickly.

Working with Others

Establishing Expectations
You will need to work with and lead others as an architect, whether they are a direct report or more often someone else’s reports. This will require you to set expectations with these individuals and be able to help them grow as individuals. Many times communications break down because expectations were not set correctly. You should strive to add tools to your architecture toolset that will allow for expectations to be set.

Stephen Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People created a tool called a Win/Win Agreement to help two parties set and manage expectations. A Win/Win agreement focuses on the outcomes or results and not how the person decides to get the results. You do not want to micromanage the individual. Win/Win agreements are characterized by five elements being made very explicit:

• Desired Results – Identify the desired results, not processes. This should include the expected outcomes and time frame.
• Guidelines – Establish the guidelines like the policies, principles and boundaries that you must work within to meet the desired results.
• Resources – Identify the people, money or other support available to help accomplish the results.
• Accountability – Establish the standards or metrics of performance and evaluation.
• Consequences – Create the positive and negative outcomes based on the evaluation.

Mentoring
Mentoring involves sharing your expertise to help teach someone and to help them meet their goals. First Break All the Rules (Buckingham, Marcus & Coffman, Curt. 1999) suggests having a planning session with the individual periodically where the following questions are asked:

• Accomplishments During the Last Period
  What actions have you taken?
  What discoveries have you made?
  What partnerships have you built?
• Planning for the Next Period
  What are your main focus/goals?
  What new discoveries are you planning?
  What new partnerships are you hoping to build?

Helping people reach their goals through coaching and removal of roadblocks is a hallmark of a good leader.

Leadership isn’t about management, but about motivating people. Your goal should be to get the best out of everyone. Setting a direction with people through strategy, coming to good decisions quickly and setting proper expectations are the hallmarks of a great leader. Every architect needs to work on the skills to be a great leader.

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Mitch Ruebush is the Leader of the Architecture Team for ING DIRECT, the largest direct bank in the U.S. He is president of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Association of Software Architects, and serves on the IASA Board of Directors. He has authored many books and articles and speaks at a number of events each year.